


Elements

by fadewithfury (foxmoon)



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:22:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmoon/pseuds/fadewithfury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was written for lostinfic's non-romantic Teninch challenge.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Elements

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for lostinfic's non-romantic Teninch challenge.

When the Doctor regenerates, it’s not just his body that changes. The very fabric of his mind is unwoven, and through it flows all that there is. All universes, all timelines. In the span of moments, he experiences everything.

There’s one universe he finds in that searing flare. There are many, sure, but there’s one in particular where he finds a woman who looks just like Rose. He never quite understands why his mind fixates on particular moments, on particular people, in particular times, but it does.

She’s crying, mascara ringing her eyes. He feels her pain and her hatred and her loneliness like brands on his flesh. There’s nothing he can do. Her life unfolds for him, as does every life ever, but this one in particular wedges in like a seed.

She was a spoilt child, but not overmuch. A good girl with a big heart and expensive taste. Her parents, both alive and prosperous, loved her in their own way. There’s a piano recital, an honor’s society, multiple scholarships, a promising career for her. All the things Rose could’ve never known.

But there’s sorrow, too. A heavy hand of it, for she has a hell of a time letting people know her heart. They couldn’t. It was a trade-off. To be successful, to be powerful, to travel the world and feel pleasure at every turn. It’s a life she chose; a life she likes. Except for the inevitability that she will hurt anyone who gets too close. Or they will hurt her.

Because she falls in love. Oh, does she ever. But they can’t understand why she does what she does. They want her to stop. They want her for their own. It’s just a job, she says, like any other. Eventually she stops telling them. Things get worse. Even her friends have gone away.

It’s not fair to be able to see into her world. It’s not right. But he’ll forget it all, every person, every world, every star, when he awakens in a new body. It comes with being momentarily sewn into all of creation, his elements scattering like dust.

Unbeknownst to him, however, some of those elements get stuck. They catch like errant dandelion fluff in the bark of trees or in cliff walls. They’re left behind as his mind and his body pull back together. At last he’s changed.

And Hannah, she’s changed too. Not wholly, not noticeably, but out of nowhere she feels a little tendril of hope. She stares out over the city, its lights sparkle in the night like the stars have nestled into concrete and steel. Love will find her someday. She won’t wait around for it, and she won’t look for it, but she will let it happen again.


End file.
